The information listed above has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, however, we accept no responsibility for its correctness.

Commercial Real Estate Advisors

History – Inn at Port Hadlock

The Inn at Port Hadlock near Port Townsend, Washington, has a long and interesting Tribal history. The land around the Inn constituted a Coastal Salish Tribal Village known as Tsetsibus, “where the sun rises”, and is established as one of the oldest occupied areas in all of Washington, going back over twelve thousand years.

In the late 1800’s, Samuel Hadlock helped develop a site in Port Hadlock, Washington, to be known as the Washington Mill Company. William J. Adams, who was the grandfather of Ansel Adams, owned and operated the company. The present site of the establishment is The Ajax Café.

There were no rapid trucks and railway transportations systems during this era; developing lumber on the coasts and bays of the Pacific Northwest was the more profitable option. This compared to shipping the lumber from the Sierra Nevada’s, which was 200 miles away. Profit from the WMC was short lived.

In 1907, the mill closed due to financial reasons. As a result, the area became depressed and the proposed railroad for the region never developed. However in 1909, hope beamed when Charles Adams began construction or the Classen Chemical Company’s Alcohol Plant. The present site of the establishment is the Inn at Port Hadlock. The WMC was able to reopen and be the supplier for the sawdust and raw material needed to distill into alcohol.

Old Alcohol Plant:

The bricks that are seen in the building today were made from the native clay of this land. The iron used for rebar, which is visible on the 2nd floor balcony, was produced by the Western Steel Mill in Irondale, Washington.

When Charles Ansel was the on-site manager of the CCC in 1910, he has grand plans of adding molasses to the fermentation residue to produce cattle feed known as bastol. He thought this would be a great supplement for the area and thus would make his company even more versatile and profitable. However, his plan became a bust and sent the California family into dire straits.

The information listed above has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, however, we accept no responsibility for its correctness.

Commercial Real Estate Advisors

With the heavy competition for alcohol product in 1913, Western Distilleries (C&H Sugar) bought out all the available stock options. Such a huge loss of capital caused the alcohol plant to close forever.

Finally in 1948 Ansel Adams and his son Michael visited the site of the Old Alcohol Plant to decipher what to do with the property. It sat for another 30 years before a plan came to action. Ray Hansen, a businessman from Bellevue, Washington bought the CCC property and over a period of nine years along with a four million dollar investment, he changed the establishment forever. The concrete shell became the Old Alcohol Plant and Marina.

Twenty-One years later in 1999, Paul Christensen of Realvest Corporation in Vancouver, Washington, purchased the hotel and marina. The completed project would be now known as The Inn at Port Hadlock.